In 2013, the Marine Corps proudly proclaimed that is was the first service component to pass a full financial audit. A few months later, when OSD CAPE reviewed the audit and found a lot of termites in the woodwork. The Marine Corps then de-certified the audit and undertook to do another one in two years after a campaign called Financial Improvements for Audit Readiness (FIAR).
In 2014, I took over a program management office and inherited ~$180 million of EOPR which stands for Equipment Off Property Records. My program office had, since before 9-11-2001, contracted to buy systems and fielded them to end users around the globe without creating a property record in the Defense Property Accounting System (DPAS).
When I realized this, I told my (incompetent) NH-IV logistician that I would not sign the quarterly property account statement without crossing out the statement that, "I have verified the physical presence and serviceable condition of all property on this account" and adding instead a statement that I cannot verify the presence or condition of the property on this account because it is not in my custody." Senior civilian staff tried to coerce me into signing it with the rationale that it was just business as usual. I told them I wouldn't sign the audit and that they could tell the CG why I was refusing and we could all give our opinions to the IG on what should be done about the $180 million accounting discrepancy.
The "right answer" was to retroactively create a property record for all of that stuff and then go to the commander who was in physical possession of the assets and have them sign for it. This stuff wasn't weapons, vehicles, and C5ISR. It was all in the category of Garrison Property Plant & Equipment (GPP&E) scattered from Okinawa to Quantico and all points in between. That same year, about $250,000 of my EOPR was transferred into the possession of the Houthis when they seized the US embassy in Sanaa. That was an easy write-off.
Not surprisingly, when my LNOs presented DPAS property receipts to the commanders' designated Responsible Officers, the answer they got in reply was almost invariably, "I'm not signing for sh*t. Get those property receipts out of my face." Then the LNO would show them a disposition letter authorizing them to take possession of "my property" and send it to salvage where I could get a receipt and remove it from my property account. That usually persuaded them to add the items to their property account rather than see it disappear.
$180 million is decimal dust on the Pentagon's balance sheet. There are probably hundreds of officers that had larger EOPR discrepancies than the one I inherited. All of it pales in comparison to the dollar value of the property that was gifted to the Taliban in August 2021.
